Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, August 17, 2014, 5:46 PM

Local markets know their local customers–that’s how they stay in business.

Ferguson Market & Liquor in the small town of Ferguson, Missouri is no different. In the case of this local market, fear of being murdered by their customers drives their business decisions—including deciding to not report being robbed to the police.

Likewise the Ferguson police decision to withhold for nearly a week the name of the police officer they say shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, in order to give him time to go in to hiding from the Ferguson lynch mob.

Ferguson Market & Liquor is the store where Brown roughed up a clerk while stealing almost $50 worth of cigarellos a week ago Saturday. Minutes laterthe unarmed hulking young black man was gunned down by Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, in the middle of a neighborhood street during a confrontation with the officer.

KDSK of St. Louis reported an attorney for the owners of the market held a press conference Friday in which he wanted Ferguson Market & Liquor’s customers to know that the store did not snitch to the police about Brown robbing the store, nor did they offer the store’s surveillance video of the robbery to police.

The surveillance video showed the 6’4”, nearly 300 lb. Brown manhandling a diminutive clerk who tried to stop him from stealing the cigarellos.

“”It’s not about them. They didn’t call the police, they didn’t ask the police to come and take the video,” said attorney Jay Kanzler.

“Now, the Ferguson Market owners are hoping the video won’t make them a target.

“”They would hope that the people of this community, who have consistently supported them, would continue to support them, and realize that whatever the police are looking at on the surveillance tapes has nothing to with what went on in the streets,” said Kanzler.”

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the store manager is terrified of being murdered by the store’s customers.

“The convenience store where the robbery took place was boarded up, but open for business on Friday. A store manager, who declined to give his name, said he fears for his life and pleaded with reporters not to suggest that he called police.

““It’s very dangerous,” he said. “They kill us if they think we are responsible. People don’t understand that.””

Ferguson is the kind of town where customers intimidate the store owners and protesters threaten reporters with Molotov Cocktails.

Looters run into Ferguson Market and Liquor this weekend.

Perhaps reporters in Ferguson should turn their attention from the police to the citizenry to find out why fear and terror rule Ferguson.

It might explain why the town’s residents quickly turned to rioting and looting businesses in their own community.